this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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Lefty Memes
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I appreciate unions, but I often feel like this website gets out of touch with them.
Many jobs simply do not lend themselves to having a union. They’re too niche, the employees are scattered around, there’s no willing union representation, etc. “These guys should just join a Union!! And if they have to - by golly, form one themselves!” Always comes off to me like such a reductive take on how complex a lot of working/employment systems are, and where unions can and cannot benefit.
It often pushes up on just being idealogical grandstanding rather than legitimately listening and understanding case by case problems in employment
There's a concept where I'm from of an employee committee, which is just an assembly of the workers in a particular workplace and a valid actor in collective bargaining. I've been a part of one to negotiate specific policies.
Still a collective bargaining agent, though. Whether or not it fits the US's specific legal categorization of a union, engaging in collective negotiations with employers in an organized manner is fairly universally applicable and positive. "Unions just don't fit this kind of work" sounds a heck of a lot like an excuse to avoid having collective bargaining altogether.
I’m not, I’m saying an individual is indulging themselves by simply hand-waiving any employment related problem as “just start collective bargaining and your problems are solved!!!”
Well, if they're handwaving and not organizing, then yeah. If they're actually organizing, then no.
In almost all circumstances, being organized for bargaining is going to be better than not being organized for bargaining. That holds whether you're hand-waving your problems before getting organized or not.
…. You understand that those are two different people, right? The person hand-waving how easy starting a union is and how easily beneficial it can be is not the same person as the worker who has to do the thing lol
Ah, gotcha. Well, my point stands. Unless your hypothetical hand-waver is unemployed or already in an union, I suppose.
I'm not American, so I don't know how hard it is to unionize in the US. Over here there are massive unions with country-wide presence that typically can set up where needed, as well as segment-specific unions. I'm pretty sure you can either start a new one with a handful of people or just... you know, call a preexisting one and sign up. I've heard about companies in the US having way more restrictive steps, having to agree company-wide to unionize and stuff like that. That's... not how we do it.
It’s very hard here, especially depending on your circumstances - and even when a union is formed they’re often unable to really… get any meaningful progress. Depending on your particular employment, it’s effectively impossible - and it gets harder the poorer you are.
It’s why it’s sometimes frustrating to hear Americans tell other Americans (often less well off than they are) to “just form a Union!”. The leftist version of “pull yourself up by the bootstraps”
Yeeeeah, see, there you lose me.
You can organize, unionized or not, and it seems like organization is a gateway to unionization, regardless of how hard that may be. And it is a fact that organization and collective bargaining will help and is a key path to improvements, so even if it's hard, it's still the way to go.
And hey, ultimately the goal is to keep electing pro-unionization leaders so it becomes easier to it's more feasible. But you don't stop doing it or recommending it just because it's harder there.
Okay, so a bunch of people organize and then the boss fires all of them for doing so. That’s not exactly a perfect system leading towards better working conditions
Who said "perfect"?
A bunch of people organize and then the boss fires them. Then the boss has no employees to do the work. Ideally this outrages enough other employees to go on strike and in a semi-functional country it would also prompt some oversight on their practices.
The more people organize, then harder it is to just fire them. The more publicly they organize, the harder it is to just fire them.
If they don't organize, the boss just gets to say what they do and for how much money, so that's definitely not a better alternative to organizing long term in terms of "leading to better working conditions".
So yeah, organizing is better. Every time.
Yeah man, but these are real people and not hypothetical worker drones in an internet comment. If they all get fired and don’t have money for food and rent, that’s really fucking bad. You can’t say “it’s always good to organize! Just take the risk of getting evicted from your apartment! Don’t let them boss you around!” And not expect the working class Joe in the factory to look at you like you’re the dumbest guy around
Organizing isn't "taking the risk". Not organizing is taking the risk.
Organizing is your only defense against arbitrary dismissals and lacking the right to push back against abusive practices (along with voting for leaders who will enforce robust labor laws). If you want to get randomly fired in retaliation for exercising your rights the safest way to get there is to have nobody who can leverage the ability of workers to grind production to a halt.
But hey, here's the fun part about collective bargaining and worker action: "working class Joe" doesn't need to take that risk, you just need enough people to set up and fight for Joe's rights regardless. If Joe feels he has to scab because he can't take the risk that's what picket lines are for.
Gotta say, looking at the context of your feed it's quite baffling to see someone go "Biden is too far to the right to vote for him, can't compromise my leftist ideology that much, so I'll go third party" and "unions are fine on paper, but you gotta be realist and let your boss step all over you, because losing your job isn't an ideological hypothetical".
After a while one may think that one of those strong stances is disingenuous when both are held at once.